It's possible. When my recessed fridge hole was inspected, the inspector deemed it too floppy (my words) and had the GC stick in an extra sheet of drywall (might have been plywood). to stiffen it up a bit. I have enough pocket doors in my house that floppy walls aren't unusual.

Has anyone ever put a ding in that wall before? If so, better have another plan. If not, it's unlikely to happen now, and if it SHOULD happen? It's not a huge repair and whoever did it will feel bad enough to offer to pay. :)

Im not a builder but they do (should) install a sheet of plywood against the outside wall, so its not like you would just be going through drywall. I think that does strengthen the wall enough to not break through with a a bump or even a hard push.

thanks fori and judith. We just got more info from the GC, he said he can build a "double wall", but it will take ~ 1" on the other side, which happens to also be tight as it is ...
I am not sure what a double wall is... (it was DH who talked to the GC).

My builder is recessing the fridge and the wall behind will be a regular thickness wall the rest of the wall with the cabinetry will actually be thicker by almost twice the amount. Of course this is a custom build that took months in the planning stages so things could change easily.

We recessed ours into an interior wall. My husband rebuilt the interior wall to be 2x6 construction (rather than the 2x4 that this Old House originally had there) then in the area where the fridge was to recess he turned the 2x6 on edge and installed them that way. He put in a LARGE header over this area to distribute the load above without relying on the wall in question. It gave us several inches to push that big silver beast back and make her "cabinet depth".

We're planning on having our contractor do this. He didn't send up any red flags when we mentioned it, but I'm glad to see this thread . . . we'll ask him how he's planning on doing this.

Double wall simply means that there are two layers of whatever.

Kellied, aha! thanks...

We are planning on doing this, too. Would you mind telling me what the depth of your refrigerator is? Does it stick out at all? Our cabs will be 24" deep. GC hasn't mentioned any structural issues,and will put 2x6's on the refrigerator wall (interior), but even at that, if a 33" regular-depth ref is recessed, it still leaves some overhang, correct?

The wall where my refrigerator is, was newly built as a part of the remodel so there are no issues with respect to structural support for the wall. For the most part the wall is 2x6 construction, but the portion where the refrigerator is recessed is covered on the far side by 3/4" thick plywood. This plywood is then covered with 1/2" thick drywall. With this configuration there are (in my mind) no concerns about the strength of the wall.

With the wall built in this way, only the doors of the regular-depth fridge stick out past the surrounding cabinets, which is necessary for the doors to open.

{{gwi:1716683}}

1/8" steel ("flat bars") can make a floppy panel of drywall rigid enough to prevent anyone from pushing the drywall out of shape.

It's only 1/8" thick.

Any other solution needs more space (1/2" or more).

thank you. The wall we are thinking of recessing will also be new construction. We might wait to buy the refrigerator until the contractor actually starts and we can talk to him in person on the job.

Bob, do you remember how deep is your recess, and what is the depth of your refrigerator, and the clearance in the back?

Function first, which brand refrigerator are you considering? Does the 33" deep include the door? I am not expert on this , so maybe others can give their opinons. We are not counting the depth of the door in our measurements because that has to stick out anyway to be able to open it. Plus you need to consider the clearance in the back. I believe the door has to clear the countertops, not the cabinets, so with 1 1/2" countertop overhang, and a 4" recess, your refrigerator + clearance would have to be without about 29 1/2 " for it not to stick.

We are considering bottom freezer, single door. Example Kenmore elite, 29 1/2" wide, depth 27 1/2" without the door, 30" with the door and no handle (did not measure the handle). Clearance in the back should be 1 or 2", depending whether the ice maker is connected or not. So this one might not stick out.
The other option is Fisher and Packel, 31" wide, counter depth: 24" without the door. But requires a 2" clearance in the back. This is a more expensive refrigerator and the cost will be compensated by not recessing it. Good luck, I wish I could postpone the kitchen remodel and take a 1 year vacation!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

When you are making modifications to the structural suppport: ie load bearing walls or structural EXTERIOR walls, it is a good idea to get the OK of the person in the know, ie the architect or the structural engineer. This usually does not apply to the non-load bearing interior walls because those walls are there to 'separate' the rooms only.

Let's say that there was a collapse of the house due to hurricane/earthquake, and the inspector found work that was NOT to code, your insurance probably will not pay the claim. just my two cents.

Not only that, if you are making the walls extra thick in the other parts to you can recess the refrigerator, then you have lost space in the other rooms... I don't see the point of this... You can spend the money and get a counterdepth refrigerator with the money spent on the extra materials and labor for the construction.

"Let's say that there was a collapse of the house due to hurricane/earthquake, and the inspector found work that was NOT to code, your insurance probably will not pay the claim. just my two cents."

Is that exception in your homeowners policy?

Mine does not have it.

Kaismom, thank you, this is a non-loadbearing interior wall.

Kitchendreaming, we're considering the Samsung RFG293HABP which is a 29 c.f. french door model. I just noticed that the depth without door and handles is 28-7/8", so it appears that we're okay with enough left over for 1"-2" clearance. I never even considered the countertop overhang-DUH.

***"Let's say that there was a collapse of the house due to hurricane/earthquake, and the inspector found work that was NOT to code, your insurance probably will not pay the claim. just my two cents."
Is that exception in your homeowners policy?

Mine does not have it.***

Have you read your entire homeowner's policy? Have you had a lawyer tell you what it means?
Have you reviewed your state's insurance laws and had a lawyer explain how they may affect you? (There can be rules in the law that will be applied to you even though they are not stated in the policy, simply because they are the law.) I'm guessing you haven't done those things, so I'm surprised by how confident you seem about what your policy would and would not cover.

Insurers will seize on any excuse not to pay a claim. That's how they make money--by not paying claims or not paying a dime more than they absolutely have to. If you make your house more likely to have a loss by doing something that's not to code--say, installing your own wiring, removing or weakening a supporting wall, etc.--then the risk that the insurer is covering just increased; it's now a higher risk than it was when the insurer decided to insure it and set the price. In other words, you have taken your house beyond the risk level that the insurer agreed to insure. That's a very legitimate reason for an insurer to refuse to pay--since after all, the risk they agreed to cover was lower than the risk you now have.

Creating a more aesthetic fridge placement is just not worth the risk of an uninsured catastrophic loss. Can you imagine still owing the bank $200,000 (or whatever) for a house that is so ruined you can't even live in it anymore? And not having the money to rebuild it or pay the bank off or buy another?! Do it to code or don't do it at all.

If this is done correctly there is not structural weakness to the wall as far as if it will fall down or not - it's not any different than framing up a doorway or window opening.

What is weaker is the sheathing of the wall, so theoretically, if you gave the fridge a really good push, you could push it right through the sheetrock into the adjoining room. In no way would that make your wall fall down.

Here is a wall that was opened up and re framed - this is similar to what some do for the fridge recess - notice the header installed - that transfers the load (this is a load bearing wall). But now there is nothing much supporting the sheetrock on the other side.

In this case, I was creating an opening so eventually the sheetrock was removed.

Ideagirl2 is exactly right about doing things to code. Also that you can read your insurance policy all day and have a very incomplete understanding of what law would actually apply to your claim if you had to make one.

Here's how we did our recessed fridge opening. The wall behind the fridge is standard 2X4 thickness and then we built another 2X4 double wall in front of that which surrounds the fridge. It is very basic if you have the space and are building new. Retro-fitting it is another matter. Some people have used only sheetrock/drywall without stud support to cover the back which makes the rear wall weak unless somethimg else is done to provide support.

kitchendreaming,

Since the rest of the wall was built with 2x6 boards and because there is 1/2" drywall on the inside of the back of the recess as well as on the normal surface of the wall where the cabinets are mounted, the depth of the recess is 5 1/2" deep.

So given that the cabinet boxes are 23 7/8" and the doors are another 3/4" inch the measurement from the face of the cabinet door to the bottom of the recess is 30 1/8".

I'll have to check for the exact depth of the fridge, I cannot seem to find the exact same model on the web currently, but it is a 25.4 cu ft Kenmore (Whirlpool) w/ in door ice. I think the depth without doors is 29 1/4" and I'm pretty sure I could push the fridge back another inch or so, but then would have interference between the doors and the panels/cabinets next to the fridge.

Here is a (not very good) view from the side that shows how much the fridge sticks out past the panel next to it.

{{gwi:1716686}}

Ideagirl, I do not agree with you. Insurers will pay claims for losses in homes which are not code compliant.

We have insured our 1922 beach cottage which originally was built as a summer home. Over the years, multiple owners added this and patched that, rented the house and milked it. Nothing in it is up to code, nothing, except for the elec we added.

A large critter got into the 2foot high crawl space and chewed up the flexible heating ducts. Only flexible ducts fit in the shifting sand bottom of the crawl space. The insurance company paid the claim without question. Rodent damage is excluded and we never got the animal but the insurer determined that the critter was not a rodent.

How? A couple of things. The size of the feces excluded small animals and more importantly, we have 3 houses and 3 cars insured with that insurer. In over 30 years, we may have had 2 small claims. Does the insurer want to lose us or go to court over this? As a retired insurance company claims person, many claims are paid as a business decision.

When an insurer assumes a risk at policy inception, it has the opportunity to examine the risk. I don't know property and casualty laws, but the law favors the insured. I am a retired paralegal who worked in the law department of a multinational insurance and insurance services corporation and I supervised the in-house defense of claim litigation.

Very few old houses are built to code as codes were nonexistent. Old houses are still insured. Claims are paid for houses not in compliance with code. Ours was.

Here are some photos of ours from old to new...

Old wall...
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In between...
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Box being built...
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Finished recessed fridge...
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I thought I had better pics of the framing process but it looks very much like macybaby's above only ours has horizontal 2x4's on edge (skinny way round) in the fridge area to catch the drywall and offer the drywall support you are concerned about.

Any GC can say that recessing the refrigerator into the wall can be done, but will weaken the wall, and it might be a problem if someone falls into it.

Technically this is correct. The weakening is fine and not a problem. You've already said it is a non load bearing wall. So that one objection is gone. Now the other objection is that someone might "fall" somehow ( a strange fall) and since it's slightly weaker THERE, at that one spot, well golly, umm, like, the damage might appear greater... No big deal.

However he is right. But he is also wrong. It's a red herring.

My first sentence quoted verbatim the OP first sentence.

Now, one might wonder "since so many here have recessed their fridges whether this is a concern or is it just the GC being extra careful." That is it. The GC is talking like he's careful, just to get you going, rile you up, put you into a tizzy. His little remark has spun a huge thread. Job well done.

Hth

Oh, another thought. Do you think there has to be a causal relationship between the not code compliant part(the recessed wall, in this instance) and the collapse of the house in an earthquake or hurricane? Would an inspector look at the house and find 4 areas of 'not code compliance' but none of these 4 areas affected the collapse of the house? So the inspector was just sniffing around looking for an excuse not to pay the claim? Are you kidding?

Would you love to be the homeowner's attorney and say that the gale force winds brought down the neighborhood, and here comes this (hated) insurance inspector and he finds that I installed the tv not to code.

Dumdedumdum---Therefore, I will allow punitive damages of 50 gazillion dollars to teach this cruel insurance company that they cannot mess with the public!

If it's not a load bearing wall, and a teen in a usual teen fit pushes the fridge thru the dining room wall, then there is a causal relationship between the loss(the dining room wall) and the non code compliant thing (the naughty recess). But a hurricane? earthquake? What do you think?

What would a jury do?

This has to be the strangest thread on GW right now. What on earth does recessing a fridge in a non-load bearing wall have to do with violating code and earthquakes?

Do people have those dangerous openings in their load-bearing walls called "doors," or did the builder just seal them up inside with their computers?

Curiouser and curiouser.

Marcolo, you took the words right out of my mouth. If I were recessinga fridge, I'd just frame it like a door!

"next to the entrance door..."

Seems to me the OP was referring to a load-bearing wall.

Kaismom, thank you, this is a non-loadbearing interior wall.

yes, it is non-loadbearing, perpendicular to the exterior wall. Anyway we will just get counter depth ref.... thanks

My wall was stronger after having a fridge recess installed. Turns out it was a pocket door hole in an earlier incarnation so it was floppy already.

But yes, if someone has a few too many, gets angry, and throws a punch at your wall, one without studs is going to have a bigger dent to patch. I suggest you'd have bigger problems though...

:)

**Do you think there has to be a causal relationship between the not code compliant part(the recessed wall, in this instance) and the collapse of the house in an earthquake or hurricane? Would an inspector look at the house and find 4 areas of 'not code compliance' but none of these 4 areas affected the collapse of the house? So the inspector was just sniffing around looking for an excuse not to pay the claim? Are you kidding?**

Kidding? Not at all. The job of an insurance inspector is to sniff around looking for a reason not to pay the claim, and then, if they can't find any remotely plausible reason, to sniff around looking for a way to pay the smallest amount of money possible (e.g., "40% of your damage was due to a covered cause, but the other 60% was due to a cause that this policy does not cover, so we'll pay for that 40%, minus your deductible."). That's how insurance companies make money for their shareholders.

And there would need to be some causal connection, sure, but your definition of "causal connection" and the insurance company's definition are unlikely to coincide. At any eventual trial, you will each pay thousands of bucks to have an expert testify--their expert will say "there was a causal connection," yours will say "no there wasn't," and your fate hangs on which expert the jury believes.

**Would you love to be the homeowner's attorney and say that the gale force winds brought down the neighborhood, and here comes this (hated) insurance inspector and he finds that I installed the tv not to code.**

See what I said above about remotely plausible reasons and causal connections. The TV installation issue isn't going to come up in that scenario (unless the installation caused a fire when the gale-force winds hit, in which case see what I said about "40% of your claim is covered..."). But removing part of a load-bearing wall, yes--there might be a remotely plausible causal connection there.

Anyway. Would you love to be the homeowner that has to pay that attorney $200-$500 an hour to sue your insurance company, and wait two years while the suit winds its way through the courts (perhaps longer if an appeal is necessary), and all the while be on the hook for a mortgage for a house that's been destroyed, and not have enough money to rebuild or even to pay your rent? Oh, and depending on your jurisdiction, it's probably possible for the insurance company to demand a bench trial, in which case there will be no jury to hate the insurance inspector--just a judge, one single judge, to decide your fate.

Meanwhile, even if you win, YOU are still on the hook for your legal costs--it is extremely rare for the losing party in litigation in this country to have to pay the other side's legal fees. So, yay! Let's say you win the $250,000 that the insurance company should have paid you! Oops, a giant chunk of that now goes straight to your lawyer... so you're still out a giant chunk of money. Nice!

**Dumdedumdum---Therefore, I will allow punitive damages of 50 gazillion dollars to teach this cruel insurance company that they cannot mess with the public!**

Hahaha. Good luck with that. When you get done watching Boston Legal and believing that that's how the law actually works--"justice done in each thirty-minute episode!"--review your remodel budget and ask yourself if saving $500 by not installing such-and-such to code is really worth the risk of going through years of expensive litigation that you might lose and that, even if you win, will still leave you out major bucks since you will still have to pay your own attorneys' fees.

Again, what on earth is all this about? The OP's wall is NOT load bearing. Even load bearing walls are frequently penetrated by openings. They have this fancy name called doors.

Rather than all this nattering about irrelevancies and what-ifs, perhaps someone wishes to address the OP's actual problem--the GC's worry that a thin sheet of unreinforced wallboard can crack or break in case of accidental impact? Which has nothing to do with collapsing houses, load bearing walls or insurance companies.

Well... after meeting with the contractor again, he advised us to just get a counter depth refrigerator, since recessing it into the wall with a plywood behind will only give us about 3", cost $400, and a regular ref. will still protrude. Maybe my walls are thinner than other people's, I do not know... This is an interior wall with no space to bump into the other side...He said recessing is better done in an exterior wall...

Thanks all...

kitchendreaming, there's always lemonade to make out of lemons. If you search the Appliance forum, you'll see many people love their CD fridges for keeping everything up front and center. Hope it works out even better than you hoped!

Or maybe you'll make an oopsie like I did and have to recess a CD fridge into your wall, just not as much! :)

Kitchendreaming,
My apologies to brining up the issue of code compliance. Let's forget the whole thing.

This is in regards to the interior wall:
There was someone else that said that they built their interior walls with 2x6 which allowed them to recess easily.... This is what I think.

recessing into the interior wall that is framed with 2x4 will give you exactly 3 inches and no more. 2x4 are nominally 4 inches which is NOT quite 4 inches, about 1/4 inch short of 4 inches. Not sure why, but that is how they (2x4) come and that is how they throw the term about.....

If you put both dry wall and plywood on the frig side to "stiffen" the wall, as many suggested, you need to take away 3/4 inch from the 3.75 inch space. This is the 3 inches left to recess into the wall that your contractor is talking about...

If you frame the interior walls with 2x6 then you will have about 5 inches total to recess. You will also be losing 2 inches from the interior of the rooms versus using framing with 2x4. In my house, I NEED those 2 inches where ever I can get it. Your house and rooms may be bigger so that may not be an issue.

You also have to order 2x6 framed door jams if you put doors on those walls. Standard door jams are for 2x4 frames. This can add up, even if a few $, if you are on a budget.... 2x6 also costs more than 2x4, so again increased $. We are strictly talking interior walls here... If the contractor has to make an extra trip to the hardware store to buy the 2x6, and you have to pay for his time, forget it, this is getting expensive!

Exterior walls are generally framed with 2x6 to give you R value for the insulation. This is a relatively "new" code update. The houses from the "mid century" generally have 2x4 exterior framing. I don't know when they changed the code. Your existing house could have either 2x4 or 2x6 exterior framing depending on its age.

Doing all this "extra" costs contractor time and money and you have to pay for that. They don't work for nothing, as you know. I think it is cheaper to buy a CD frig, IMHO, rather than losing the space to 2x6 framing AND/OR paying the contractor for recessing unless he is throwing in the work for free.

IMHO, I would not want my kitchen (or the bedroom or the closet) to lose 2 inches to 2x6 framing (versus 2x4 framing) so I can have my frig recessed into the wall. I would just bite the bullet and buy a CD frig.

Hope this clarifies a few issues for you.

Recessing on an exterior wall is not a better option. You need to have insulation which makes the interior/exterior wall depth a wash.

THanks all. With the lemons, I will make mojitos and margaritas which I will cool in my new CD and I will invite you all!

Glad CD was an option for you. It was not for some of us and thus we made the choices we did.

The OP asked about drywall, we answered, somewhere along the way it went SOUTH.

Talk of code compliance, expense and earthquakes?

Our recess was easy. We DIY so it was not more expensive. My wall is STURDY. As marcolo and others point out, doors, windows, pass throughs all can exist in a load bearing wall if there is a suitable header.

It's good to mull options but sometimes we wander in ye olde forum. :)

I am so lucky to have learned about recessing refrigerators on this forum. My fabulous contractor did our recess and didn't bat an eyelash and gave us another 3-3.5 inches for a fridge.

Yes, someone could fall or bump into the fridge and push it into the dining room wall, but I am peacefully expecting that that will not happen. I like the idea posted here about the steel, 1/8 bars, but learned about it way after our recess had been done. Still hoping for the best.

MOJITOS???? Sounds like a party!!!